Tuesday’s Take Your Best Shot: Muzzleloader Elk

Scenario: Elk turning hard to look for the call made by a muzzleloader elk hunter

Muzzleloader: CVA Accura Muzzleloader Mountain Rifle, .50 cal.

Range: 125 yards

Conditions: Sunny; 50 degrees; gusty 20-mph wind, in your face

You timed your Carlton’s cow call well, and now it’s peek-a-boo time. If you would have waited any longer, this Colorado bull would have disappeared into a dog-hair-thick stand of cedars to the right. You have only a few seconds before he steps into cover. He locked up and is twisted like a pretzel. Where do you plant your Hornady bullet? Check out the three possible aiming points below and take your best shot.

A. Drop the anchor and that’s exactly what you’d do with a high shoulder shot. The impact from the 250-grain bullet would break the scapula and buckle the bull, but would it kill the bull or create chaos?

B. All the textbooks say that when you aim for a quartering-away shot, you should line up with the far shoulder. Take another look. This bull is curving like a Slinky, and looks can be deceiving. If you aim too far back, you might not drive one into the end zone.

C. With this bull’s radical, curving stance, this shot placement should clip the top of the heart and/or create a vital-zone wound channel that even an ER doctor couldn’t repair.

Have you made a decision? I’m going with option C and make smoke now before this bull realizes he’s been duped by my call. Oh, by the way, you better cowboy up because the real work starts after the smoke clears.

Image by Mark Kayser

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